Bishops’ Uproar is Just an Excuse To Rant

So it is about contraception, after all.

In fighting insurance coverage for contraceptives under the new health-care law, Catholic bishops and some Republican politicians repeatedly said they objected to a government mandate because it infringed on religious liberty.

A proposed federal rule to require religiously affiliated nonprofits to provide contraceptive coverage violates the Catholic belief that contraception is immoral, the bishops protested. Although use of contraceptives is almost universal, even among Catholics, the bishops appealed to the public on the grounds the rule was about violating religious freedom, not contraception.

“When the government tampers with a freedom so fundamental to the life of our nation, one shudders to think what lies ahead,” Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

It worked. Even moderate Democrats and liberal Catholics urged Obama to accommodate the bishops’ objections.

And so last week, the Obama Administration announced the rule would be changed. While religious nonprofits must still provide health insurance, coverage of contraceptives would be offered only to employees who ask for it.

However, the charities would not have to pay for it. Instead, insurance companies would pick up the tab since contraceptives are cheap, while pregnancy is expensive.

So the bishops’ concerns about religious freedom were placated, right? Guess again.

In an internal memo from five senior bishops, and later in a statement issued by the U.S. Conference, they still objected. A chief complaint is the government’s distinction between the church as a religious organization, which is exempt from the rule, and the church’s charities, which employ non-Catholic workers and serve the public.

The bishops argue, correctly, that the church’s charities are extensions of itself, undertaken out of religious convictions, so there should be no distinction.

But now that the church’s charities are also exempt from the rule, why continue the fight?

The answer is that the rule might raise religious liberty issues for others, too. [More]

SOURCE

Cary McMullen/Hernando Today